We Must Keep the Oil in the Soil

Governors, mayors and policy makers from around the world are gathering this week for the Global Climate Action Summit. The conference was organized by California Governor Jerry Brown. The conference begins today just days after Brown signed a new law to shift California to 100 percent carbon-free electricity by 2045. While Brown is hailed as a climate hero, he has been widely criticized by many climate justice activists who are planning to protest outside the opening of today’s conference. We speak to Bill McKibben, the co-founder of 350.org. His latest piece for the Nation is titled “Jerry Brown’s Climate Legacy Is Still Being Decided.”

AMYGOODMAN:Rise: From One Island to Another, poetry by Kathy Jetñil-Kijiner of the Marshall Islands and Aka Niviâna of Greenland. It’s part of a project that our guest, Bill McKibben, was part of. This isDemocracy Now!,Democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman.

We are broadcasting from San Francisco, where California’s Governor Jerry Brown’s Global Climate Action Summit officially begins today, the conference occurring just days after Brown signed a new law to shift California to 100 percent carbon-free electricity by 2045.

GOV.JERRYBROWN:There’s no understating the importance of this measure. SB 100 is sending a message to California and to the world that we are going to meet the Paris Agreement and we’re going to continue down that path to transition our economy to zero emission, zero carbon omission, and to have the resiliency and the sustainability that science tells us we must achieve. California is committed to doing whatever is necessary to meet the existential threat of climate change. And yes, it is an existential threat. No matter what the naysayers may say, it is a real present danger to California and to the people of the world. This bill and others I’m going to sign this week help us go in this direction. But have no illusions; California and the rest of the world have miles to…